Joy Harjo "Deer Dancer"

            Joy Harjo crafts a unique poem pertaining to a cultural shift in morals and life-style to a strict heritage of people in "Deer Dancer."  She also encompasses the inner feelings and desires of women of the night by relating their life-style of frivolous dancing for income to a deer.   The symbol of a deer represents how the wild and untamed beast they become when they dance is natural to them and has become natural to the society due all the changes in morality.  The bar where all the strippers, lowlifes, thugs, and as the poem describes, "broken survivors, the club of shotgun, knife wound, of poison by culture," is not only where these individuals gather but their hardships of life.  The bar contains principals of culture that have spiraled downward into pool of pain that only the dancers can cure with their dance that is sacred to them.  Her mystical movements clean the broken-hearted men or women that fill that place but in turn create more troubles thoughts of her own.  

Gwendolyn Brookes "Saudie and Maud"

            Gwendolyn Brooks accomplishes invoking the roll of the 1940s African American female in her poem "Sadie and Maud" by portraying their different social identities that black women could have.  One of the obvious rolls given is the young girl that successfully becomes a college graduate, but at the price of her youth.  The other is girl who skipped out on the option of going to college to enjoy herself and the beauty of her youth and working through life.  These two girls do differentiate in their rolls by shame accompanying the girl who used her beauty to pass through life and the other partnered with loneliness for pursuing education.  And even though Saudie's beauty brought two children that the rest of her family didn't approve of, she still had more pride and love for those two girls than her sister did.  Moral of the story, don't be so judgmental of the actions of other because karma is a bitch.  

Ted Hughes "The Horses"

Ted Hughes "The Horses" is one of the more eerier poems that I have read this year.  Its dark tone and damp theme instinctively and instantly create the idea that the four legged beasts represent death and the terror they bring with them.  Hughes goes into deep detail of the dismal scene of the woods and frost surrounding the animals with finer imagery than most poems I interpret.  At first glance, these horses seem to be representing one of the four apocalyptic horses, death, but Hughes sheds light into the poem by shedding light.  By doing this he not only changes tone and theme for the piece but what the horses represent themselves.  He includes that a "red light" splits through the clouds.  To me, this imagery created  not only a stronger theme for death but for the murderous idea of war.  Hughes says in stanza seventeen, " In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces/May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place," and creates that these horses have a job to do and nothing will stand in their way.  

Philip Larkin "Church Going"

Philip Larkin's "Church Going" conveys a strong theme of absence in religion for both the poet himself and every attendant of modern church.  From the very beginning Larkin mentions the disbelief of religion inside of the church even while the sermon is going on.  As he talks about his own thoughts, his belief with religion is absent as he fills an empty seat on a pew with an empty shell of a man.  He ponders about the other participants of this tradition and wonders why they all attend also.  Do they really believe in it, are they like him, or do they all congregate to relieve themselves of past sins in order to cleanse the palate?  Larkin erupts these types of question through the poem as he establishes another theme through his many questions.  He strongly persists on the idea that God may becoming absent in religion and people due to the church and its ways.  He forms the idea that the church is killing religion in itself because we are forced into a confined building and expected to praise instead of actually wanting to; relaying the idea that it has become more of a conditioned  habit than a faithful tradition.  

Robert Lowell "For the Union Dead"

                "For the Union Dead" portrays the evolution and advancement of society while the great old historic monuments and events of the past are left to dissolve like faint memories.  Lowell concentrates on the social aspects of society and how in his point in time there is an albescence of gratuity for those that have sacrificed so much to establish equality.  He also vaguely indicates the political factors that went into creating the equality by mentioning prime figures of the Civil War.  Colonel Shaw was the only man that took on the duties to lead an all-black regiment to fight against the republic.  Lowell incorporates a presence of familiarity and loyalty by displaying some slang from his era in stanza thirteen quoting, "Shaw's father wanted no monument/except the ditch,/where his son's body was thrown/ and lost with his 'niggers (48-51).'"  Obviously Lowell wanted his audience to feel a sense of remorse for destroying and forgetting about the history that helped shaped America for personal satisfaction and comfort.  

Shel Silverstein - "The Perfect High"

Shel Silverstein delivers a very unique twist on what would be a children's poem in "The Perfect High."  The story follows the druggie named  Gimme-Some Roy who seeks that perfect high through effort, determination, and pain.  He follows his dream of attaining the high that's going to satisfy him forever once he snorts, smokes, or sticks it in his veins.  Through the perils of the mountain to get that perfect high he must go through the guru Baba fats that knows the secrets of the getting it.  But in the end, Baba Fats leads him down a new road full of more crap than the last.  The irony is that Baba is in a state of being high as he talks to the Lord while sitting on top of a mountain completely naked before sending the persistent  youth to nowhere.   The captivating  story and rhythm make the poem memorable and leaves an impression of how quizzical and crappy life can be. 

blog on howl

            Allen Ginsberg's  "Howl"  is like a love letter to the dark underground of drugs and filth that the author occupied while he was free to roam the underbelly of New York and New Jersey.  To start off, I really did not enjoy it for the fact that it just sounded like one long continuous rant from the author.  He depicts the humans of the city society in a raunchy and ridiculous way that's seems childish because he can't control himself.  It's almost as he needs to curse in some areas to get his point across to the audience but in fact he doesn't really need to.  I will say that the way he rally's and combines his word creates a distinct diction about the poem that leaves an imprint.  To me this seems like a rant, but its slightly less annoying knowing that it does fulfill the purpose of describing the specifics of that time period related to that area.  It creates the notion that this time period, not everything was fine and dandy and that everyone lived a "Great Gatsby" life but revels that the American dream, and the road to it, was corrupt just as the society itself.